#aromanticity

I’ve seen a bit of discourse on my dash lately concerning aspecs disrespecting each other’s boundaries and, for lack of anything better to do, and also due to personal frustrations on the matter, I figured I’d throw in my own two cents on the matter. The root issue is people always conflating aromanticity and asexuality; either mistakenly believing one cannot exist without the other also being present, or personally being unable to differentiate between them due to being aroace. The latter being perfectly valid, by the way. Although I technically also am bi, my aromantic identity is so overpowering that my bisexuality is little more than a footnote. I more commonly use the alloaro label. But because of this, I do find it annoying when I go browsing through the aromantic tag and am bombarded with asexual and/or aroace content. I’m looking for experiences like my own, after all, and although aros and aces have a lot in common, we are not exactly the same - a fact that non-sam aros and alloaros in particular still find ourselves having to defend from people who either don’t know any better or simply refuse to acknowledge it because they think sex without romance is a sin deserving of eternal damnation or whatever. You could say it’s a bit of a sore spot. I’m not begrudging aroaces their place in the aspec community, though. They belong. They deserve to share their experiences and find connections. Online spaces are for many people their only refuge and I would never want to take that away from anybody. But sharing a space with other people means respecting boundaries. Sometimes we’ll want to talk about certain topics and only want feedback from people who are in the exact same place. When others then chime in with additions that, though similar, are not fully and entirely related, it can feel incredibly invalidating, like they’re trying to derail the conversation - even if the intention was to bridge a gap and commiserate. It’s just not wanted, sometimes. So when someone asks people not to tag as ace or aro, but you’re aroace and cannot for the life of you understand why when the two are so closely intertwined in your heart - then that post is simply not for you. Even if you relate a lot. I’ve often come across posts from asexuals talking about their experiences and thought to myself, “Man, I feel that!” but I wouldn’t tag it as ‘aromantic’ if I were to reblog. Because it’s not. Please check the original poster’s tags and respect them. Simple as that. If you feel very strongly about it, remember that you are always free to make your own post and describe things from your perspective, and free to tag it as you like. Not everything is for me, and not everything is for you.

sooooooo lucky i’m aromantic bc i could not sleep in the same room as someone. like yeah babe love you too but we need separate rooms so i can listen to witherburn after school news at 4 am and then pace on and off for an hour. yeah babe it’s bc i don’t wanna wake you up